Increasingly, resources such as heavy crude oils, bitumen, tar sands, shale oils, and hydrocarbons derived from liquefying coal are being utilized as hydrocarbon sources due to decreasing availability of easily accessed light sweet crude oil reservoirs. These resources are disadvantaged relative to light sweet crude oils, containing significant amounts of heavy hydrocarbon fractions such as residue and asphaltenes, and often containing significant amounts of sulfur, nitrogen, metals, and/or naphthenic acids. The disadvantaged crudes typically require a considerable amount of upgrading, for example by cracking and by hydrotreating, in order to obtain more valuable hydrocarbon products. Upgrading by cracking, either thermal cracking, hydrocracking and/or catalytic cracking, is also effective to partially convert heavy hydrocarbon fractions such as atmospheric or vacuum residues derived from refining a crude oil or hydrocarbons derived from liquefying coal into lighter, more valuable hydrocarbons.
Numerous processes have been developed to crack and treat disadvantaged crude oils and heavy hydrocarbon fractions to recover lighter hydrocarbons and to reduce metals, sulfur, nitrogen, and acidity of the hydrocarbon-containing material. For example, a hydrocarbon-containing feedstock may be cracked and hydrotreated by passing the hydrocarbon-containing feedstock over a catalyst located in a fixed bed catalyst reactor in the presence of hydrogen at a temperature effective to crack heavy hydrocarbons in the feedstock and/or to reduce the sulfur content, nitrogen content, metals content, and/or the acidity of the feedstock. Another commonly used method to crack and/or hydrotreat a hydrocarbon-containing feedstock is to disperse a catalyst in the feedstock and pass the feedstock and catalyst together with hydrogen through a slurry-bed, or fluid-bed, reactor operated at a temperature effective to crack heavy hydrocarbons in the feedstock and/or to reduce the sulfur content, nitrogen content, metals content, and/or the acidity of the feedstock. Examples of such slurry-bed or fluid-bed reactors include ebullating-bed reactors, plug-flow reactors, and bubble-column reactors.
Coke formation, however, is a particular problem in processes for cracking a hydrocarbon-containing feedstock having a relatively large amount of heavy hydrocarbons such as residue and asphaltenes. Substantial amounts of coke are formed in the current processes for cracking heavy hydrocarbon-containing feedstocks, limiting the yield of lighter molecular weight hydrocarbons that can be recovered and decreasing the efficiency of the cracking process by limiting the extent of hydrocarbon conversion that can be effected per cracking step in the process, for example, by deactivating the catalysts used in the process.
Cracking heavy hydrocarbons involves breaking bonds of the hydrocarbons, particularly carbon-carbon bonds, thereby forming two hydrocarbon radicals for each carbon-carbon bond that is cracked in a hydrocarbon molecule. Numerous reaction paths are available to the cracked hydrocarbon radicals, the most important being: 1) reaction with a hydrogen donor to form a stable hydrocarbon molecule that is smaller in terms of molecular weight than the original hydrocarbon from which it was derived; and 2) reaction with another hydrocarbon or another hydrocarbon radical to form a hydrocarbon molecule larger in terms of molecular weight than the cracked hydrocarbon radical—a process called annealation. The first reaction is desired, it produces hydrocarbons of lower molecular weight than the heavy hydrocarbons contained in the feedstock—and preferably produces naphtha, distillate, or gas oil hydrocarbons. The second reaction is undesired and leads to the production of coke as the reactive hydrocarbon radical combines with another hydrocarbon or hydrocarbon radical. Furthermore, the second reaction is autocatalytic since the cracked hydrocarbon radicals are reactive with the growing coke particles. Hydrocarbon-containing feedstocks having a relatively high concentration of heavy hydrocarbon molecules therein are particularly susceptible to coking due to the presence of a large quantity of high molecular weight hydrocarbons in the feedstock with which cracked hydrocarbon radicals may combine to form proto-coke or coke. As a result, cracking processes of heavy hydrocarbon-containing feedstocks have been limited by coke formation induced by the cracking reaction itself.
Processes that utilize fixed bed catalysts to crack a heavy hydrocarbon-containing material suffer significantly from catalyst aging due to coke deposition on the catalyst over time. As noted above, coke and proto-coke formation occurs in cracking a hydrocarbon-containing material, and is particularly problematic when the hydrocarbon-containing material is a heavy hydrocarbon-containing material, for example, containing at least 20 wt. % pitch, residue, or asphaltenes. The coke that is formed in the cracking process deposits on the catalyst progressively over time, plugging the catalyst pores and covering the surface of the catalyst. The coked catalyst loses its catalytic activity and, ultimately, must be replaced. Furthermore, the cracking process must be conducted at relatively low cracking temperatures to prevent rapid deactivation of the catalyst by annealation leading to coke deposition.
Slurry catalyst processes have been utilized to address the problem of catalyst aging by coke deposition in the course of cracking a hydrocarbon-containing feedstock. Slurry catalyst particles are selected to be dispersible in the hydrocarbon-containing feedstock or in vaporized hydrocarbon-containing feedstock so the slurry catalysts circulate with the hydrocarbon-containing feedstock in the course of cracking the feedstock. The feedstock and the catalyst move together through the cracking reactor and are separated upon exiting the cracking reactor. Coke formed during the cracking reaction is separated from the feedstock, and any coke deposited on the catalyst may be removed from the catalyst by regenerating the catalyst. The regenerated catalyst may then be recirculated with fresh hydrocarbon-containing feedstock through the cracking reactor. The process, therefore, is not affected by catalyst aging since fresh catalyst may be continually added into the cracking reactor, and catalyst upon which coke has been deposited may be continually regenerated.
Other slurry catalysts have been used in slurry cracking processes for the purpose of seeding the formation of coke. Very small particle slurry catalysts may be dispersed in a hydrocarbon-containing feedstock for the purpose of providing a plethora of small sites upon which coke may deposit in the course of the cracking process. This inhibits the formation of large coke particles since the coke may be dispersed throughout the hydrocarbon-containing feedstock on the small catalyst particles.
While slurry catalyst processes provide an improvement over fixed-bed catalysis of heavy hydrocarbon feedstocks, coking remains a problem. Generally, the upper limit of recovery of hydrocarbons from a heavy hydrocarbon cracking process is around 70%, where the non-recoverable hydrocarbons are converted into coke and gas.
WO 2008/141830 and WO 2008/141831 provide a process and system for hydroconversion of heavy oils utilizing a solid accumulation reactor. A hydrogenation catalyst is dispersed in a slurry in a reactor capable of operating stably in the presence of solids deriving from and generated by a heavy oil. Heavy oil is hydroconverted to produce a lighter hydrocarbon product by reaction of the heavy oil with hydrogen and the catalyst at temperatures effective to convert the heavy oil. Product may be vaporized in the reactor and stripped from the slurry to be captured as a vapor exiting the reactor, or a liquid product may be separated from the reactor, where a vapor product may be separated from the liquid product separated from the reactor. Solids including coke and metals produced by the hydroconversion accumulate in the reactor and are removed from the reactor by continuous flushing in proportion to the amount of solids generated once a pre-established minimum accumulation level is reached in the reactor. Large amounts of solids including coke, sulfided metals, and insoluble asphaltenes are generated in the process of producing the vapor product. As a result, the yield of desirable of liquid hydrocarbons recovered from the heavy oil is limited by the quantity of coke and insoluble asphaltenes produced in the process.
Improved processes for cracking heavy hydrocarbon-containing feedstocks to produce a lighter hydrocarbon-containing crude product are desirable, particularly in which coke formation is significantly reduced or eliminated and the rate of hydroconversion is greatly increased.